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Topic: Battle Brothers (Read 1176 times)

Battle Brothers was released a week and a half ago, and it has been one of the few success stories to "survive the gauntlet of early access". The game seemed promising when I tried it a long time ago, and now that I and a few others have played a good chunk of the released version I can say that I'm thoroughly impressed.

For those who haven't seen it before, here's an extract from the game's description.

"Battle Brothers is a turn based tactical RPG which has you leading a mercenary company in a gritty, low-power, medieval fantasy world."

It's relatively difficult, and you'll find yourself getting screwed over time and time again, and you slowly realise that you're sending depressed farmhands who want a bit of money to their deaths against a whole manner of ghastly things. Bandits, Goblins, Orcs, undead warriors, other, more dangerous romanised undead people, necromancers, sorcerers, nasty things that eat corpses and get bigger, spectral beings whose signature move is to make your men shit themselves, werewolves, smaller, wolflike things, goblins riding smaller, wolflike things, and of course professional soldiers of the nobility, if you end up pissing them off (not recommended).

It's very fun, very rewarding and everything within the game is quite well made and written. There's context to everything you do, and the progression throughout the game feels natural and rewarding. I'll leave a link to a couple of examples as to why the game’s so enjoyable.

I think if you want to get into the game what you really have to think about and what many people don't seem to realise is that melee defence is very important, early on you should really just stack melee defence, melee skill and fatigue (if one of those gets a low roll then health, resolve or ranged defence) on all your frontliners and put them in the best shields and armor there is, and just minimize the chances that they will die, you don't need to kill the enemy faster than they can kill you, you just need to be able to fight for longer. Also spears, they have a +20 accuracy bonus.Also, initiative is niche, don't put points in it unless you know what you are doing and are building a character for it, and never put points in it for frontliners, your meatshields so to say. They will go last and lose all their initiative either way because of all their fatigue.

Weapons with 2 square reach are amazing, crossbows and bows aren't really all that great unless you buy a bowyer/archer character who will already have high ranged skill on level one, or sellswords, I think they generaly just start with amazing stats in everything.

Late game you can substitute out most of your meatshields for twohander high damage characters if you want, but early game I wouldn't recommend it. Early game is just the time of the shields and spears as I said, maybe once you get some higher melee skill some flails aswell. I generaly avoid axes on the frontline, instead I use the twohanded 2 square reach axes for backline and give the people using them axe mastery aswell so the enemy can never have a shield again.

I think if you want to get into the game what you really have to think about and what many people don't seem to realise is that melee defence is very important, early on you should really just stack melee defence, melee skill and fatigue (if one of those gets a low roll then health, resolve or ranged defence) on all your frontliners and put them in the best shields and armor there is, and just minimize the chances that they will die, you don't need to kill the enemy faster than they can kill you, you just need to be able to fight for longer. Also spears, they have a +20 accuracy bonus.Also, initiative is niche, don't put points in it unless you know what you are doing and are building a character for it, and never put points in it for frontliners, your meatshields so to say. They will go last and lose all their initiative either way because of all their fatigue.

Weapons with 2 square reach are amazing, crossbows and bows aren't really all that great unless you buy a bowyer/archer character who will already have high ranged skill on level one, or sellswords, I think they generaly just start with amazing stats in everything.

Late game you can substitute out most of your meatshields for twohander high damage characters if you want, but early game I wouldn't recommend it. Early game is just the time of the shields and spears as I said, maybe once you get some higher melee skill some flails aswell. I generaly avoid axes on the frontline, instead I use the twohanded 2 square reach axes for backline and give the people using them axe mastery aswell so the enemy can never have a shield again.

I'd definitely agree with you on that one. I haven't really had the chance to experiment much, but my melee skill/defence doctrine with some fatigue improvements has been going quite well. We've all played similar numbers of hours post-release, and of quite a few people that are playing the game simultaneously it seems that I've been the most successful so far.

Only real issue I've found is a difficulty in finding good enough archers and crossbowmen, my party right now has 1 companion archer with a missing nose, broken knee and other debilitating, permanent injuries.

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22:34 - Roran Hawkins: Radovid's like you22:34 - Roran Hawkins: but then insane22:34 - Roran Hawkins: Dijkstra is like you

I'd definitely agree with you on that one. I haven't really had the chance to experiment much, but my melee skill/defence doctrine with some fatigue improvements has been going quite well. We've all played similar numbers of hours post-release, and of quite a few people that are playing the game simultaneously it seems that I've been the most successful so far.

Only real issue I've found is a difficulty in finding good enough archers and crossbowmen, my party right now has 1 companion archer with a missing nose, broken knee and other debilitating, permanent injuries.

I just wouldn't worry much about archers early game, i'd stick with the companion you always get who is pretty good at archery and otherwise just use 2 square range spears, billhooks and axes aswell as a frontline meatshield. Good archers are usualy bowyers, huntsmen and poachers and they are usualy more expensive than others anyways, also bowyers can proc a special event if you have the trade good wood which can give you a pretty nice bow for that wood and 250 crowns. I wouldn't try to train archers who start below 50, even if you they have a 2 or 3 star bonus. I'd say the prereq for actualy using someone as an archer is atleast a skill of 50 on level one, doesn't matter if they've got stars or not. Otherwise he'll always be behind on skill compared to frontliners and other archers. Also early on, farmhands are obviously the best, but I wouldn't stray away from professions such as graverobber, historian, apprentice and cultist and such, they have some nice bonuses aswell. Intrestingly though, militia is a blank slate, no bonuses and negatives, farmhands are actually better statwise. Same with fishermen, the only bonus they offer is a random extra fish event. Usually I stray away from those without bonuses and obvious bad ones such as cripples.

I just wouldn't worry much about archers early game, i'd stick with the companion you always get who is pretty good at archery and otherwise just use 2 square range spears, billhooks and axes aswell as a frontline meatshield. Good archers are usualy bowyers, huntsmen and poachers and they are usualy more expensive than others anyways, also bowyers can proc a special event if you have the trade good wood which can give you a pretty nice bow for that wood and 250 crowns. I wouldn't try to train archers who start below 50, even if you they have a 2 or 3 star bonus. I'd say the prereq for actualy using someone as an archer is atleast a skill of 50 on level one, doesn't matter if they've got stars or not. Otherwise he'll always be behind on skill compared to frontliners and other archers. Also early on, farmhands are obviously the best, but I wouldn't stray away from professions such as graverobber, historian, apprentice and cultist and such, they have some nice bonuses aswell. Intrestingly though, militia is a blank slate, no bonuses and negatives, farmhands are actually better statwise. Same with fishermen, the only bonus they offer is a random extra fish event. Usually I stray away from those without bonuses and obvious bad ones such as cripples.

Yeah, I've played plenty of the game, but the way that the map generated means that the sources of trading goods, ranged units and cheap gear are all in the nasty, snowy, northern bits, meanwhile my company is operating across a nice bay in the south.

I haven't seen special events in action yet, despite how much I've played. For now my party consists of some farmhands, fishermen, companions and millers; classic Battle Brothers.

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22:34 - Roran Hawkins: Radovid's like you22:34 - Roran Hawkins: but then insane22:34 - Roran Hawkins: Dijkstra is like you

Honestly, cripples aren't that bad, neither are any of the really cheap backgrounds. And if they suck too much you didn't lose anything basically and can just disband them. And chances are you'll find a decent amount of 50 melee skill beggars with two melee stars aswell or something. For like 60 crowns.

Agreed, though they're extremely squishy early on even in good armor which is their real issue. I've had a cripple become one of my best soldiers -- lower health, good avoidance and attack though.

I've always found militia to be a good well-rounded choice that's not too expensive; better than farmhands in some ways. Farmhands are pretty damn good though. I sometimes pick a theme for my company and just try to follow that.